


Coping; The Beauregard Story.

by thatoldeblackmagic



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Empire Siblings - Freeform, Fluff, Gen, Magic as a Love Language, idk how to write anything else, its platonic if i had to clarify, punching also as a love language, this is all soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:07:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27079315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatoldeblackmagic/pseuds/thatoldeblackmagic
Summary: Beau took the dome for granted back when they used that shit every night.  Totally slipped her mind that it wasn’t just a warm space, but also a protected space until the Traveler himself, an old-ass fey pseudo-god, couldn’t even get through it when Caleb decided not to let him.It’s happening again too with their mansion.  It was all luster and nervous excitement and cat butlers for the first couple weeks, but now it’s just a given.  When they’re all tapped out from a long day and Caleb has to inform the Nein that they have to stay at an Inn for the night, there’s a general gentle grumbling because they’re all spoiled as hell.or: sometimes people you love show their love through magic to cope
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast
Comments: 22
Kudos: 172





	Coping; The Beauregard Story.

Magic is like, super dope, and Beau still gets some residual jealousy about it when she’s reduced to ‘pop, pop, kick, repeat’ during their fights while Caleb gets to cast ‘Widogasts Death Wall of Fire’ or some shit.

Though in some instances she tends to forget all about it. Beau took the dome for granted back when they used that shit every night. Totally slipped her mind that it wasn’t just a warm space, but also a protected space until the Traveler himself, an old-ass fey pseudo-god, couldn’t even get through it when Caleb decided not to let him.

It’s happening again too with their mansion. It was all luster and nervous excitement and cat butlers for the first couple weeks, but now it’s just a given. When they’re all tapped out from a long day and Caleb has to inform the Nein that they have to stay at an Inn for the night, there’s a general gentle grumbling because they’re all spoiled as hell. Once, after a long day that turned into a long night that dragged into a sluggish late morning, Caleb whipped out his silver thread for the first time in months and Beau had all but forgotten that it existed.

To be honest, they’re probably not using it as it should be used. They run around during the day, teleporting from place to place, picking up orders or visiting family, going to diplomatic dinners and fighting in underground rings. Then Caleb sets up their little door at night and they all have family dinner mostly at Cad’s insistence, and then they go to their own rooms and pass the fuck out.

It’s been a while (ha) since any of them have really had time to use the place to the fullest. Hell, there are rooms that Beau hasn’t even been in since the original tour of the place. She’s even gotten used to having her own bedroom which is weird as fuck since she never thought she would feel comfortable sleeping without at least one of her people around her.

And fuck it, she’s been trying to be kinder. More conscientious and thoughtful but nothing can be as kind or thoughtful as this whole fucking mansion that Caleb labored over to cater to each of them individually and then all of them as a group. And here she is taking it for granted, just like the dome.

It’s this that keeps her up one night, after a bitingly cold day on the frigid seas of the far North, after they’ve all retreated into their separate warm little rooms all made just for them. She’s staring up at her ceiling mirror which she hasn’t gotten to properly use yet, and fuck man. Caleb made this room and thought, ‘ja she deserves a magic mirror on her ceiling’ because he just cares so much about her and put thought into what she wants. What the fuck!

Beau sits up. There’s a three story library below her and she hasn’t even gotten to look through it yet because they’ve been so busy. He said it’s all the books he’s ever read which essentially means it’s Caleb’s brilliant mess of a brain in written format which seems pretty personal. 

And, well yeah. Of course it is. This whole place is Caleb’s personal love letter to the rest of the Nein, why wouldn’t he give them access to his own knowledge if he thought they would even be remotely interested? Why wouldn’t he crack open his skull and spill its contents onto shelves in the form of paper and ink and then offer it up to their little found family like it doesn’t cost him anything? It’s the most impersonal way of opening up that Beau has ever come across and it's just so Caleb that it makes Beau want to punch a wall.

She can afford to be a bit tired tomorrow. Not like she was gonna sleep well anyway, so she might as well look through the bookshelves a bit. Maybe she can find some old Zemnian picture books about farm animals and learn all the animal names and just say them at random in front of the others and pretend she like learned Zemnian through osmosis because monk shit.

So she heads down through the retractable iris and floats down into the library. Which like, dude. It’s that thing where you see the same shit all the time, you live in this beautiful ethereal space and suddenly after extended exposure it’s ordinary. This library has been just sitting here beneath her for ages and she’s never really taken the time to look at it which is a damn shame she’s realizing very quickly that its fucking gorgeous.

The whole place is so warm. From the dark sweet smelling wood to the plush burgundy couches and the stacks on stacks of throw pillows and blankets, Beau wonders if Caleb’s brain is like this too. Haphazard and expansive but somehow so well worn and comfortable. She’s sure Caleb would say it isn’t, make some self-deprecating joke how his brain is a tangled ball of yarn but instead of thread it’s thistles, but. But Beau knows better.

She pads barefoot across the wood floors and realizes they must be heated by magic. The first bookshelf she approaches is labelled by topic (Divination) and sorted alphabetically by title rather than by author. The outer shelves follow that pattern, moving from topic to topic (Divination, Dunamancy, Enchantment, Evocation) all sorted by title. Beau makes a general mental map of the place and plans out what section she wants to hit first, until she hears a faint noise from a side wing.

It takes her a second to relax from her readied stance when she reminds herself that the only people in here are her people. No one else can get in. It might be one of the fucking cats, gods know its not the first time she’s been caught of guard by those things, but something is telling her that this isn’t that. She knew objectively that there are little offshoots to the library, but she also never had a reason to go in there before. The only person who would be in there this late is the wizard boy wonder himself. 

The noise has long since dissipated, but Beau walks softly into the wing where it came from. There’s a doorway leading into it, a decorated archway with the symbol of Iune resting at the highest point which throws Beau for a fucking loop. There’s a building sense of something, not dread though it sits in the same place deep in her stomach. Carefully, she peaks in through the open doorway and, gods. It's almost too much.

This is her wing, the library wing Caleb made for her, it has to be. The shelves are labeled ‘Erotica’, ‘History’, ‘Languages’, ‘Martial Combat’, ‘Wine Making’. There’s a table in the center surrounded by plush dark blue arm chairs and couches with her ratty wizard slouched down in one of them. The whole place is bathed in a cool blue-green light and feels like exactly the type of place Beau could sink into for hours.

Caleb notices her entry and shifts to peer around the edge of his book. ‘Beauregard?’ He says in that quiet and confused and dear way of his and Beau has to leave.

She turns on her heel and heads into the next side wing of the library. It’s door is much taller than hers with decorative ivy around the edges. She steps inside to a green space, a seemingly naturally lit area even though it's the middle of the night. The shelves aren’t floor to ceiling like her wing, but rather all different heights and colors, an eclectic mix of pinks and purples all with their own little labels. ‘Baked Goods’, ‘Death and Dying’, ‘Herbs and Fungi’, ‘Vegetarian Recipes’. Beau takes a deep breath and goes to the other wings one by one.

They’re all tailored to the Nein. Alchemy and tinkerer guides for Veth with a few shelves on cons. Cases of rolled maps and sailing guides for Fjord. Jester has an Erotica section too and a whole space for art supplies and sketch books. Yasha gets books about armed combat, with a section about local flora with pressed flowers between the pages.

Beau storms back into her little wing, all bluster because what the fuck. Those were it. Unless there’s a secret wing she doesn’t know about, he made special little study nooks for everyone else but himself and then didn’t tell any of them. Beau isn’t angry, but she doesn’t quite know how else to act with this weird mix of suffocating love and strange sadness filling her lungs from the inside out.

She pulls out the chair next to Caleb, punches him in the arm with 35% of her strength, and watches as he reels back from her. “Oww?” He asks like it's a question.

“Good,” Beau replies which makes no sense. “You should oww.” Which makes even less sense.

Caleb blinks at her slowly. “Okay.” He says, complacent as fuck, and goes back to reading his book which Beau sees is titled ‘Dangerous Visions’ which she knows is a good fucking smut book about two Divinators who see each others deaths and then work in secret to try and change fate to save each other while also having a lot of well written sex along the way. It’s her favorite book. She mentioned that exactly once about 4 months ago. It makes her cry every time.

Beau punches him again.

Caleb shuts the book with his finger still marking the page and says, “Please stop hitting me. I am made of glass.”

Beau punches the table instead.

She breathes in deep and realizes suddenly that the place even smells like she would want. It’s sandalwood and hyssop which isn’t something she thought she knew she liked until it was presented like this, in a fucking magical library wing made just for her.

Beau clenches and unclenches her palm against the wood of the table and eventually just decides to go for it. Beau clears her head in the monk way she’s been taught because she’s gotta use what Dairon taught her eventually, lifts her head, looks Caleb straight in the eyes and says, “You’re my best friend, you know that right?”

Caleb blinks at her and looks entirely nonplussed which Beau realizes is something she really likes about him. She can walk in here in the middle of the night, punch him, punch a table, make some dramatic confession, and he just takes it in stride even if he’s panicking on the inside. He stares at her for a bit, his eyes flicking from her face to her hand on the table to somewhere over her left shoulder, before he opens his book again. “Good,” He says abruptly, “Because you are mine too.”

Suddenly, Beau wants to punch him again which she knows isn’t a good way to process emotion. It’s just, she’s all kinetic energy all the time. She wants to move and react and exist through her body but also someone acknowledging that they also consider you their best friend is not a great time to punch. Instead, Beau straightens up and rolls out her shoulders, like she's gearing up for a fight but it's too bad you can't get physical with emotions.

Which is kind of fucked. In what world can you punch ghosts but not feelings? Aren’t ghosts just the residual and lingering feelings of people who died?

Beau stands up and nods, “Cool. Dope. Besties for life.” And then she flees out into the main library. Half of her wants to run, but the bigger half, the heavier half wants to stay and focus all that kinetic energy onto Caleb which he will hate but also love because they’re both messes and also best friends.

She gathers as many pillows and blankets as she can find in the library and heads back into the wing (her wing) where Caleb is. He has the book held like he’s reading it but Beau can see he’s still on the same page as before with this pointer finger tucked in between the pages.

“Get up. I’m gonna move that chair,” Beau says, dumping the armful of linens onto the floor.

He does, standing slowly and stepping back from the table. Beau uses the space to push the table as far back as she can, letting the surrounding chairs go wonky and sideways. She then gathers up all the chairs and couches, arranging them into two parallel lines with the backs facing each other, and drapes the blankets across the gap. The pillows get used to either hold up the blankets, or tossed into the center area beneath the makeshift blanket roof.

She steps back to survey her work and it’s alright. It’s tall enough for both of them to sit in with room for Beau to sprawl out if she wants to. There’s a bit of a gap at the bottom through the legs of the couches and chairs, but those are for ventilation purposes. Blanket forts can get stuffy as hell. All that matters is that there are enough pillows shoved inside for both of them to drown in which is the first rule of blanket fort construction.

Beau turns to Caleb who is still standing in the corner a bit curled in on himself. She motions to the front of the fort and says, “Fort’s ready.”

Caleb stares at her for a second. “Ah,” He replies slowly, “I see that. Congratulations?”

“Thanks I guess.” Beau heads over to the ‘History’ section to snag up volume 2 in an anthology of Ancient Sylvan literature before pulling back the front blanket and going inside. She barely gets in before she remembers that Caleb would never take this as an open invite Blanket Fort because he’s hyper cautious about people’s space to the point of it being a little upsetting. So, Beau pokes her head out and says, “You coming?”

Caleb hasn’t moved. He’s still clutching the book to his chest and standing there like he doesn’t know what to do. It takes him a moment to process the words, his big brain probably hurtling through social walls and subtext that doesn’t exist before he finally uncurls from the wall. Caleb shuffles over to where Beau his holding open the door flap, and finally settles in.

Beau watches as he grabs some pillows to sit on, one for behind his back, either side of his legs, one in his lap to prop up his book until he’s essentially boxed in. He looks smaller but not in a reduced way, more like he’s letting himself be small, to exist comfortably in a small space. Rather belatedly, Beau realizes that he never used to do that. He would purposefully place himself in the open closest to the exit, never confined, always ready to bolt.

It’s a super weird thing to get emotional about, especially in a fucking blanket fort built inside of a giant magical mansion of Caleb’s own making, but like here she is, feeling feelings. Seems to be a common theme tonight. Fuck.

“Beauregard?” Caleb says, because she’s been staring blankly at him for probably a full 10 seconds.

She shakes off the weird heavy pit in her stomach and says, “Can you make those lights? I’m gonna get eye strain or something if I try to read in here. And can you make them blue?”

He looks at her for a second, and then his eyes crinkle a bit at the corners, his mouth barely turning up at the edges. “Blue it is,” Caleb responds, and then the lights pop up one by one.

He arranges them with one in each corner and one hanging smack in the middle of the sagging roof. The whole fort is bathed in a soft blue light, almost sunlight filtering in from underwater. It’s warm and quiet and Beau could fall asleep in here, she just might actually. “It’s like we’re in the ocean in here.”

“We’ve been in the ocean before and this is not even similar. Not as many things out to murder us for sure.” Caleb responds, flipping the page of his book.

“It’s like how other people without ocean related murder trauma would think being in the ocean is like in here.” Beau amends.

Caleb exhales abruptly through his nose which Beau knows is a laugh. He doesn’t even look up at her and it's another sign that he’s comfortable. When they had that weird super tense dinner with Trent Ickythong and the evil twins, Caleb hadn’t been able to stop looking. His eyes were flicking everywhere, reading everything, moving from face to face to the door to any movement in the room. Now he’s bundled and reading and smiling and he just laughed and it 100% isn’t the appropriate time, but Beau has the sudden urge to protect. She wants to pile the rest of the pillows all around him so he’s completely covered up and cozy as fuck.

He’s settling into the fort but Beau suddenly can’t. Now she’s restless, wanting to do something with her hands, her body, she wants to move, she wants to take out any threats but the thing is there aren’t any. Caleb made sure of that, has always made sure to keep their little unit safe at their most vulnerable.

She keeps fidgeting. She picks her book up, puts it down, can’t read a single line, and eventually Caleb extends his legs and kicks her in the shin. It feels like she got play-punched by Luc, it’s so soft with absolutely no force behind it. Beau looks over to find him staring back at her. “Did you just break a toe doing that? Yesterday was leg day, you okay?”

Caleb just raises a single eyebrow at her. And like fuck him for being able to do that so well. Fjord can too, but he uses it diplomatically, Caleb only uses it among friends.

He doesn’t say anything. “What. Did you actually break a toe?” Beau says.

“You are thinking so loud that I cannot concentrate. What has your panties in a twist?” Caleb responds.

“I’m so upset Jester taught you to say that and that you only ever say it in front of me because you know I hate it.” Beau responds, and Caleb smiles again, for real this time. He doesn’t say anything else. He’s waiting her out, she knows this, knows it’s going to work because where she’s all kinetic energy, he’s all potential. She used to think that giving in was losing, but well. It’s safe being vulnerable with these people. And isn’t that just the best fucking thing she’s ever come to terms with.

“Don’t freak out.” Beau says. Caleb raises the other eyebrow.

Beau slowly moves forward, pushing herself toward Caleb, and settles in against his left side. She clears out the pillows he has built up there and inserts herself there instead. He tilts to the right a bit, before steadying himself as Beau leans more of her weight into him. After a bit, Beau gets situated. Her whole right side is pressed up against his left and she’s hooked their arms together because it's easier to turn the page that way. Her legs are sprawled out again with her ankle hooked around his. 

There’s a second, then several, as Beau pretends to keep reading, before Caleb says, “What is this.”

“It’s cuddling. I told you not to freak out.” Beau flips the page.

Caleb shifts, slumping down a bit so they’re pressed a little more comfortably together. “I guess you did.” And then he tips his head to the side to bonk it lightly against Beau’s which makes her bust out into a big stupid grin.

She squeezes their arms together tightly. “I love you, man.”

He squeezes back. Beau smiles so hard her nose scrunches up. “I love you too, my dude.” He says which gets Beau to full on belly laugh.

They stay like that for a long while, both of them falling into their books. Eventually Beau falls asleep dozing off on Caleb's shoulder. She wakes fully a while later still in the fort, but lying down covered with a blanket and a pillow under her head. She shifts and finds Caleb asleep and lying on the ground at her side, his book still propped open by his pointer finger by his head.

She picks up the book, makes mental note of the page number, sets its aside and tucks a blanket around Caleb's shoulder. Then, Beau lays back down and decides that she can afford to sleep a little longer. So long as they're all safe, sound, and warm. 

Beau falls back asleep to the sound of Caleb's gentle breathing, and has never considered herself so lucky.

**Author's Note:**

> uh. so. welcome to my empire siblings fluff one shot that i didn't know i was going to write.
> 
> this was supposed to be widojest BUT LIke i love caleb and Beau and i realized i havent ever written them before!!! HOW?! i think about them all the time!
> 
> anyway. this is a silly fic. hope you like it.


End file.
